6 ms·

Ask HN: Which blogs/newsletters would you be willing to pay $5/month for?

45 points by refrigerator 9y ago

A lot of people are happy to pay $10/month for https://www.stratechery.com. Interested to see who else out there has loyal readerships willing to pay them!

keenerd 9y ago
I'm willing to pay $5/month for one blog: my own. That is what a basic VPS with plenty of bandwidth costs. edit: Interesting, this is fast approaching my most downvoted comment ever. Wonder why that is. I didn't even bother to link my own blog in case that came off as overly self-promotional. If you think that content should be free, what is wrong with putting your money where your mouth is and giving your own away?
- username223 9y ago
  Same -- I pay about $5/mo to host a blog. Part of me wishes people would pay to read it, but the rest of me is in touch with reality. People who want to give me money can buy other things. I am also willing to pay for good reporting and writing, e.g. the New Yorker and my local paper, because they require actual work. I wouldn't pay for Stratechery, which is just an opinion blog.
justaguyhere 9y ago
I'd happily pay for these: List of real life ideas/pain points that can be solved and sold with software, with some decent research into it (not like "my uncle says he will pay $3.50 to automate his antique shop") Same as the previous one, but in the non-profit space and not for making money. Specific problems that I can write code for, without having to worry about whether it is actually useful or not Stories/commentary/interviews about companies working on solving very hard problems with tech, regardless of whether they succeed or not (not photo sharing apps, but problems like genetics, pharma, privacy etc) Actionable insights/ideas on improving my abilities - creativity, problem solving, health etc (no pseudo science, no "motivational" stuff)
- wpasc 9y ago
  Amen to all of these, especially to the "not photo sharing apps" point. I love working in tech and am in awe of its transformative power, but I am very sick of so much talent/money going to useless attention zappers. I'd happily pay for the first three mentioned in the above post
- timo_f 9y ago
  > List of real life ideas/pain points that can be solved and sold with software, with some decent research into it (not like "my uncle says he will pay $3.50 to automate his antique shop") Does anyone know if this exists?
  - dhruvkar 9y ago
    https://nugget.one/daily https://nugget.one/daily Last i checked here sent an email with some background research. The ideas are from people willing to pay for a solution. Also see: http://www.opportunityoverload.com http://www.opportunityoverload.com
phatboyslim 9y ago
I discovered it primarily as a YouTube channel but the guy who makes http://iliketomakestuff.com http://iliketomakestuff.com has some great projects out there, including a number of arduino based projects. I’m trying to expand my horizon beyond web development and it appeals to my inner maker.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
kevmo 9y ago
I would pay $5/month for Hacker News, Drudge Report, and reddit.com/r/all.
- brador 9y ago
  Well, https://skimfeed.com https://skimfeed.com is free. Get yourself something nice with that $5 :)
  - guybedo 9y ago
    This is nice, didn't know skimfeed. I've been working on a news aggregator too, just released my first beta :-) http://aktu.io http://aktu.io
- tootie 9y ago
  Haven't seen anyone talk about Drudge in 7 or 8 years. I see he's still doing the 48pt headlines and the thoroughly biased journalism.
  - jerkstate 9y ago
    Drudge doesn't do any reporting, just aggregates articles from all over the spectrum - Buzzfeed to Breitbart, Newsweek to Newsmax, but mostly stuff in between (the headline right now is distilled from the first sentence of the Rasmussen article it links to, which I don't think is a biased source, although you may not like what is being reported)
- gpmcadam 9y ago
  > and reddit.com/r/all Good news, you can already - and it's actually cheaper than $5 https://www.reddit.com/gold?goldtype=autorenew&period=monthly&edit=true https://www.reddit.com/gold?goldtype=autorenew&period=monthl...
piracykills 9y ago
Is it bad if I'd say absolutely none? If any I read started charging I'd find similar content somewhere else.
- bArray 9y ago
  I agree, something feels impure about paying for knowledge, we should be pushing back on any kind of pay wall. That said, I'm really not sure what system should be put in place to pay for quality content.
  - paulryanrogers 9y ago
    Must it be paying for knowledge? What about paying for convenience of accessing it anytime anywhere and in a timely manner? Ultimately someone has to do the research and legwork. If they don't get paid they'll do less/none.
    - ac29 9y ago
      Blogs are already convenient to access anywhere, anytime and in a timely manner. Its called RSS. Not sure how $5/month would improve on that.
      - bArray 9y ago
        The content for that RSS feed has to come from somewhere though. RSS is cool, but it doesn't seem sustainable by itself.
    - bArray 9y ago
      >Must it be paying for knowledge? What about paying for convenience of accessing it anytime anywhere and in a timely manner? I'm willing to put up with a considerable amount of inconvenience for open content, including advertising (as long as they are not tracking or using unknown scripts). $5/month is also a lot of money to me, that currently covers: website, IRC, VPN and a game server. Most the people here may be on a better than average wage working within tech fields, so I imagine opinions to be skewed. >Ultimately someone has to do the research and legwork. If they don't get paid they'll do less/none. I mentioned this originally and I'm not entirely aware of how to tackle this - but I think the overall cost to the user financially should be really low or nonexistent. That could mean an attention economy, mining coin on a specialized chip, or whatever other reasonable means. It should also be a choice where possible. Another idea I thought of a while back would be to have people reading the content help share the load of hosting by acting as a peer. There's some not very well supported server sockets (last time I checked) coming for browsers that could make this possible, but equally with a well designed client. Potentially the more popular the content, the less it costs to run.
philosphorous 9y ago
I just began paying $5/mo to be a "member" at Medium. It's meant to enhance the discovery feature and the ability to access curated archives. Really it was a spur of the moment decision after I found myself reading and greatly appreciating an article from 2015[1], but I haven't really used the membership or understood it well enough to say that I'll continue yet. I think there's great need for a specific type of personal journalism Medium is known for, and I do want to support it especially if it means better research and discovery. Also given how much I've read off of Medium (good and not so good), a payment of some sort felt due. Let's see. [1] https://medium.com/matter/living-and-dying-on-airbnb-6bff8d600c04 https://medium.com/matter/living-and-dying-on-airbnb-6bff8d6...
- buildbuildbuild 9y ago
  I would categorize Medium as a product rather than a publisher, there's quite a bit of the ambiguity behind the term "website" these days.
hkmurakami 9y ago
very good entertainment that hits my niche and isn't widely available for free. Investigative journalism ("sponsoring" good work being done) Content that helps me make more money that I can't get for free elsewhere online. Content that helps me save costs that I can't get for free elsewhere online.
thisisit 9y ago
> Interested to see who else out there has loyal readerships willing to pay them! So, shouldn't the more apt question be - Which blogs/newsletter you are paying $x/month for?
CraneWorm 9y ago
None
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
andr 9y ago
Kottke.org. The best digest of the culture side of the Internet.
- ac29 9y ago
  In case you didn't already know, kottke does already have a membership model: https://kottke.org/members/ https://kottke.org/members/
wchandler 9y ago
I will be very reluctant to pay a monthly fee for any website.
- Spivak 9y ago
  I'm in the same boat. I have a subscription to a music service and a VPS provider but that's it. Recurring charges are weird, maybe stressful is the right word. I'm constantly pressured to use the service to feel like I'm not waisting money but then when I do I have to keep evaluating whether it's worth it. Perpetual licenses I have no trouble popping though. I think my gaming habit is a good example, I probably spend on average $10-20 on games every month from the same service but I wouldn't pay $15/mo for their entire catalog.
nemo1618 9y ago
I would gladly pay $10/month to read Slate Star Codex. Heck, I'd pay $10/month just to have access to its archived posts. I'd pay $5 for ranprieur.com. Not a ton of content, but he keeps me thinking about interesting questions. I don't follow Gwern actively but I'd probably pay to have access to his site too.
digitalni 9y ago
How do you know that "a lot of people" are paying to read stratechery.com? Any sources to back this claim?
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago
  > How do you know that "a lot of people" are paying to read stratechery.com "Ben Thompson has several thousand readers who are happy to pay him $100 a year for his excellent Stratechery newsletter" [1]. [1] https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/04/why-newspaper-subscriptions-are-on-the-rise/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/04/why-newspaper-subscription...
- lawrencewu 9y ago
  He makes $200k / year from his newsletter: http://www.niemanlab.org/reading/ben-thompsons-stratechery-is-doing-200000-a-year-in-revenue/ http://www.niemanlab.org/reading/ben-thompsons-stratechery-i...
  - vasilipupkin 9y ago
    wow, that seems really not much for a publication focused on business strategy.
    - scarface74 9y ago
      That was a few years ago when he said he had 2000 subscribers. He doesn't say how many he has now.
praptak 9y ago
Seriously don't know. Anything I can think of seems like a stretch. I pay a monthly fee for access to a popular Polish newspaper/news portal though.
johnmax 9y ago
hn
jwilcoxson 9y ago
I was paying $5/mo for Ars Technica, and recently switched to paying $50/year, because they were giving away a Yubikey with it. You don’t get any more content, but no ads and full text RSS.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
alexpetralia 9y ago
Matt Levine's Money Stuff
Spidler 9y ago
LWN.net gets a bit more than $5. You pay to get quality content a few weeks ahead of time. Well worth the money.
- danieldk 9y ago
  You pay to get quality content a few weeks ahead of time. Just a week ahead of time: https://lwn.net/op/FAQ.lwn#subs https://lwn.net/op/FAQ.lwn#subs But I agree, LWN.net is awesome, I am also subscribed for $7 per month. They have really well-researched articles about Linux and the Linux community.
washadjeffmad 9y ago
I'd pay $5/mo for a digital-only Lapham's Quarterly, and I'd be willing to pay separately for The World in Time.
CM30 9y ago
None of them. Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of blogs and media sources I like, but at the end of the day I can get any information I want somewhere else for free. Heck, in many cases, the information I need is either paid for by taxes (the BBC) or provided by hobbyists for free anyway.
- jancsika 9y ago
  100% agree. There's also some sleight of hand in that headline... Which git repos would you be willing to pay $5/month to clone?
- justaguyhere 9y ago
  I'm not sure this is correct always. Sure you can get much of the information for free, but not any, as you mention. And even if you did, you'd be paying for it with your time, spending hours and days poring over data and separating facts from noise. For example: if you are an investor, can you get information on potential opportunities (stocks to buy or whatever) without having to spend money or a lot of time? What about real estate? If you or a loved one has a unusual medical condition and you're interested in knowing every recent development in the diagnosis, treatment etc of the condition, can you get it accurately and quickly for free? Happy to be proven wrong, but I guess we'd be paying for good information/commentary/analysis etc one way or other - with time or money.
Broken_Hippo 9y ago
There aren't many. HN is the closest, but the truth is that I'd not start out paying $5 a month for it: I'd have to have 3 months free to test, then .... maybe. I'd probably pay for Reuters, AP, or BBC. The thing with these is varied content or content I check on my own. The problem with most things bogs is that I don't get that much out of them. They are like newspapers or magazines: Might be OK every now and then, but nothing I'd read daily without getting bored of the content or finding it not nearly as useful as paying attention to them occasionally. I really wish advertisements were responsible and non-intrusive, but unfortunately this is rarely so. It wasn't so with television, newspapers, and magazines pre-internet either. Paid cable was filled with so many ads! Even paid channels advertising their own advertising long after a decent cable guide on demand existed. My other big exception might be a cooking blog if it lacks the horrible ad experience and stops people from forcing their morals on me (I can buy organic flimsy brand butter if I choose, but listing it as an ingredient annoys me to no end). But again, I'd not pay it upfront and a free full-access trial would be necessary.
- jnbiche 9y ago
  > and stops people from forcing their morals on me Those are almost certainly not their morals that they're including in the recipe, but rather their monetization strategy. Those brand-specific ingredients are likely examples of brand placement.
  - Broken_Hippo 9y ago
    The brand specific ones are probably so. Simply listing "organic butter" isn't such a thing, and it happens quite often. I understand enough to just use the butter I have, but some folks truly aren't. (I once had someone tell me ibuprofen didn't work for them: they had to have Advil. Same stuff happens with cooking, even with ingredients mandated to be the same).
vphillips 9y ago
Hi, I was curious to see the responses to this question. I run Opportunity Overload and we have paying subscribers for our pro-tier. We started at $10 per month and now have a $50 per month plan (still working on the details of this). We send out the best weekly entrepreneurial opportunities in the form of sites, side projects, domains, broad opportunities and courses that we write. http://www.opportunityoverload.com http://www.opportunityoverload.com Focus on providing something that you would want to pay for. 'Scratch your own itch' sort of speak. Hope this helps, Vic
nottorp 9y ago
5/month is too much. Consider how many different websites you're reading in one month, then imagine they all cost $5/month. It will start to hurt. On the other hand, sites that charge you directly have to charge a minimum because of banking fees etc. What we need is some middleman that will charge you $15/month then distribute it somehow along all the sites that you wish to support. Criteria to be done, maybe evenly, maybe based on how much you read from each...
- rusbus 9y ago
  If Brave / BAT actually catch on, this is the exact problem they're solving
Hnrobert42 9y ago
I already do for Ars Technica, Wikipedia, and NPR.
lolikoisuru 9y ago
LWN.net It's not a blog or a newsletter but proper journalism and definitely worth the $5/mo I pay for it. I don't think there is any newsletter that just recycles other people's content would be worth the money.
cirgue 9y ago
I would pay for a professionally edited newswire service that doesn't advertise and doesn't sell content to anyone other than end users.
TheAceOfHearts 9y ago
Currently I don't pay for any blogs or newsletters. I'd be willing to pay for high quality content as long as it were still made freely available, ideally with a permissive license. It is my belief that knowledge should generally be accessible to society. I support content creators that have used similar strategies in other mediums. Some examples: 1. Exploring ES6 [0]. The book is freely available online which means I can access it anywhere and easily share relevant sections if the need arises, such as when having an online discussion or explaining to a beginner how a specific feature works. I happily bought a copy and regularly recommend it to others. 2. Textual [1]. It's an open source IRC client which charges for the precompiled version. I like having the option to dig into the source and compile it myself if the need arose. Paying for it allows the developer to continue working on bug fixes and improving the tool. If I were more involved in the topics they covered, I'd happily start paying for LWN.net [2]. They allow linking to articles without paywalls and seem to produce very high quality content. [0] http://exploringjs.com/es6/ http://exploringjs.com/es6/ [1] https://www.codeux.com/textual/ https://www.codeux.com/textual/ [2] https://lwn.net/ https://lwn.net/
ilovetux 9y ago
I don't think I would pay a monthly membership for a website, but what I would be willing to pay for is Google and Facebook to stop watching me and showing advertisements. If I could pay the online ad companies to pay the content creator like I was a "click" or a "view" I could have an ad-free online experience while the content creator continues to get paid like I had seen the ad. The opportunity for Google is huge I know a lot of people who would cough up $5-10/mo for an ad-free online experience.
thinkdisruptive 9y ago
Almost none, unless it was something I'd read every day + found more than 1/2 articles relevant + useful. Won't even pay for NYT if only 5 or 6 articles/month add significant value. We need a subscription business model that aggregates content like cable/pay tv, so I can pay a fair price once, and continue grazing across most sites without worrying about individual subscriptions or micropayments. WSJ and Economist are only sources I would pay for (at a reasonable price) that aren't providing specific data points I can use. And, most people wouldn't find those as useful as I do, so it's down to personal preferences and how much of any source you'll get value from. It's why individual subscriptions to everything is a dead-in-the-water business model that's going to kill off most journals. Most sites will be abandoned if there is a paywall. Think about it this way -- how many people would pay for The History Channel or HGTV as individual add-on tv channels? Yet a very large number of people will occasionally watch those sources if it's included in general subscription, and they add value to the overall package, even if you rarely watch them. That's the way I view 99% of online content. And, you have to make it dead easy, and not be constantly harrassing me about subscriptions or micropayments, or I'm gone. And, I also expect sites I'm paying for to be ad-free and not slowing down my browser, or I won't pay.
rpdillon 9y ago
I was recently introduced to the 3blue1brown youtube channel. Easily worth $5/mo, IMO. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYO_jab_esuFRV4b17AJtAw https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYO_jab_esuFRV4b17AJtAw
- aogl 9y ago
  Thanks for introducing this to me!
rutierut 9y ago
I'm subscribed to the correspondent but it's more their mission and work I'm supporting than actually paying to read their articles, though they are very good.
pjc50 9y ago
I tell you what would be amazing: content aggregators (like HN) that charged and distributed money to the content providers. Unfortunately it's really hard to build a community if you charge.
- rayalez 9y ago
  Are you familiar with steemit? They're trying to do something like that, although the result is not as good as HN or even reddit.
subpixel 9y ago
I would pay $5/mo to use Twitter, but only if every other user paid the same amount and there were no ads.
- aldoushuxley001 9y ago
  I'm curious, what is it about Twitter that you'd pay for?
  - subpixel 9y ago
    If it ceased to be free it would possibly maintain its utility and gain some civility b/c most of the people that constitute the political echo chamber would balk at paying.
- justaguyhere 9y ago
  I'm curious why Twitter isn't at least experimenting with this (or Facebook and others). Even if just 10M accounts paid $5 per month, it is 600M biz a year.
nunez 9y ago
LWN.net. I don't read their articles often, but seeing what's on the forefront of the Linux project and associated work without combing through tons of commits is useful
gigama 9y ago
I read more blogs (single articles based on headlines of interest) than newsletters (digests that show up in my inbox). While I find many of them interesting and informative (krebs, schneier, ars, hn...) there's so much duplicated info around there isn't much I'd be willing to actually pay $60/year for. Would rather do something like cryptocurrency micro-payments per actual article read to the end (or upvoted, clapped, etc) as opposed to spending a set amount of money per month for potentially unhelpful content or articles I don't get around to reading. That would reward content creators for writing good material that actually gets read and the economy of scale would pay based on that mutual incentive. Such micropayments would also be a better metric than simple impressions and clicks.
rayalez 9y ago
Definitely http://slatestarcodex.com http://slatestarcodex.com Extremely engaging, educational, well-researched articles. More articles from EY at http://lesswrong.com http://lesswrong.com. Hacker News.
baobaba 9y ago
I stumbled upon https://www.dailycodingproblem.com/ https://www.dailycodingproblem.com/ recently and it's the first time I want to pay for a newsletter. I don't need to pass a coding interview, but I used to be a competition programmer in high school and love thinking of tricky coding problems to solve. The newsletter includes a detailed solution to each problem (the next day.) What a great idea. I also used to pay for http://railscasts.com/ http://railscasts.com/ by Ryan Bates - back when it was a paid subscription. I paid for how succinct the information was organized, despite there being a tonne of other Ruby blogs out there.
aivarsk 9y ago
https://blog.acolyer.org/ https://blog.acolyer.org/ - for summary/overview of CS papers.

45 points by refrigerator 9y ago

A lot of people are happy to pay $10/month for https://www.stratechery.com. Interested to see who else out there has loyal readerships willing to pay them!

keenerd 9y ago

I'm willing to pay $5/month for one blog: my own. That is what a basic VPS with plenty of bandwidth costs. edit: Interesting, this is fast approaching my most downvoted comment ever. Wonder why that is. I didn't even bother to link my own blog in case that came off as overly self-promotional. If you think that content should be free, what is wrong with putting your money where your mouth is and giving your own away?

username223 9y ago
Same -- I pay about $5/mo to host a blog. Part of me wishes people would pay to read it, but the rest of me is in touch with reality. People who want to give me money can buy other things. I am also willing to pay for good reporting and writing, e.g. the New Yorker and my local paper, because they require actual work. I wouldn't pay for Stratechery, which is just an opinion blog.

justaguyhere 9y ago

I'd happily pay for these: List of real life ideas/pain points that can be solved and sold with software, with some decent research into it (not like "my uncle says he will pay $3.50 to automate his antique shop") Same as the previous one, but in the non-profit space and not for making money. Specific problems that I can write code for, without having to worry about whether it is actually useful or not Stories/commentary/interviews about companies working on solving very hard problems with tech, regardless of whether they succeed or not (not photo sharing apps, but problems like genetics, pharma, privacy etc) Actionable insights/ideas on improving my abilities - creativity, problem solving, health etc (no pseudo science, no "motivational" stuff)

wpasc 9y ago
Amen to all of these, especially to the "not photo sharing apps" point. I love working in tech and am in awe of its transformative power, but I am very sick of so much talent/money going to useless attention zappers. I'd happily pay for the first three mentioned in the above post
timo_f 9y ago
> List of real life ideas/pain points that can be solved and sold with software, with some decent research into it (not like "my uncle says he will pay $3.50 to automate his antique shop") Does anyone know if this exists?
- dhruvkar 9y ago
  https://nugget.one/daily https://nugget.one/daily Last i checked here sent an email with some background research. The ideas are from people willing to pay for a solution. Also see: http://www.opportunityoverload.com http://www.opportunityoverload.com

phatboyslim 9y ago

I discovered it primarily as a YouTube channel but the guy who makes http://iliketomakestuff.com http://iliketomakestuff.com has some great projects out there, including a number of arduino based projects. I’m trying to expand my horizon beyond web development and it appeals to my inner maker.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

kevmo 9y ago

I would pay $5/month for Hacker News, Drudge Report, and reddit.com/r/all.

brador 9y ago
Well, https://skimfeed.com https://skimfeed.com is free. Get yourself something nice with that $5 :)
- guybedo 9y ago
  This is nice, didn't know skimfeed. I've been working on a news aggregator too, just released my first beta :-) http://aktu.io http://aktu.io
tootie 9y ago
Haven't seen anyone talk about Drudge in 7 or 8 years. I see he's still doing the 48pt headlines and the thoroughly biased journalism.
- jerkstate 9y ago
  Drudge doesn't do any reporting, just aggregates articles from all over the spectrum - Buzzfeed to Breitbart, Newsweek to Newsmax, but mostly stuff in between (the headline right now is distilled from the first sentence of the Rasmussen article it links to, which I don't think is a biased source, although you may not like what is being reported)
gpmcadam 9y ago
> and reddit.com/r/all Good news, you can already - and it's actually cheaper than $5 https://www.reddit.com/gold?goldtype=autorenew&period=monthly&edit=true https://www.reddit.com/gold?goldtype=autorenew&period=monthl...

piracykills 9y ago

Is it bad if I'd say absolutely none? If any I read started charging I'd find similar content somewhere else.

bArray 9y ago
I agree, something feels impure about paying for knowledge, we should be pushing back on any kind of pay wall. That said, I'm really not sure what system should be put in place to pay for quality content.
- paulryanrogers 9y ago
  Must it be paying for knowledge? What about paying for convenience of accessing it anytime anywhere and in a timely manner? Ultimately someone has to do the research and legwork. If they don't get paid they'll do less/none.
  - ac29 9y ago
    Blogs are already convenient to access anywhere, anytime and in a timely manner. Its called RSS. Not sure how $5/month would improve on that.
    - bArray 9y ago
      The content for that RSS feed has to come from somewhere though. RSS is cool, but it doesn't seem sustainable by itself.
  - bArray 9y ago
    >Must it be paying for knowledge? What about paying for convenience of accessing it anytime anywhere and in a timely manner? I'm willing to put up with a considerable amount of inconvenience for open content, including advertising (as long as they are not tracking or using unknown scripts). $5/month is also a lot of money to me, that currently covers: website, IRC, VPN and a game server. Most the people here may be on a better than average wage working within tech fields, so I imagine opinions to be skewed. >Ultimately someone has to do the research and legwork. If they don't get paid they'll do less/none. I mentioned this originally and I'm not entirely aware of how to tackle this - but I think the overall cost to the user financially should be really low or nonexistent. That could mean an attention economy, mining coin on a specialized chip, or whatever other reasonable means. It should also be a choice where possible. Another idea I thought of a while back would be to have people reading the content help share the load of hosting by acting as a peer. There's some not very well supported server sockets (last time I checked) coming for browsers that could make this possible, but equally with a well designed client. Potentially the more popular the content, the less it costs to run.

philosphorous 9y ago

I just began paying $5/mo to be a "member" at Medium. It's meant to enhance the discovery feature and the ability to access curated archives. Really it was a spur of the moment decision after I found myself reading and greatly appreciating an article from 2015[1], but I haven't really used the membership or understood it well enough to say that I'll continue yet. I think there's great need for a specific type of personal journalism Medium is known for, and I do want to support it especially if it means better research and discovery. Also given how much I've read off of Medium (good and not so good), a payment of some sort felt due. Let's see. [1] https://medium.com/matter/living-and-dying-on-airbnb-6bff8d600c04 https://medium.com/matter/living-and-dying-on-airbnb-6bff8d6...

buildbuildbuild 9y ago
I would categorize Medium as a product rather than a publisher, there's quite a bit of the ambiguity behind the term "website" these days.

hkmurakami 9y ago

very good entertainment that hits my niche and isn't widely available for free. Investigative journalism ("sponsoring" good work being done) Content that helps me make more money that I can't get for free elsewhere online. Content that helps me save costs that I can't get for free elsewhere online.

thisisit 9y ago

> Interested to see who else out there has loyal readerships willing to pay them! So, shouldn't the more apt question be - Which blogs/newsletter you are paying $x/month for?

CraneWorm 9y ago

None

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

andr 9y ago

Kottke.org. The best digest of the culture side of the Internet.

ac29 9y ago
In case you didn't already know, kottke does already have a membership model: https://kottke.org/members/ https://kottke.org/members/

wchandler 9y ago

I will be very reluctant to pay a monthly fee for any website.

Spivak 9y ago
I'm in the same boat. I have a subscription to a music service and a VPS provider but that's it. Recurring charges are weird, maybe stressful is the right word. I'm constantly pressured to use the service to feel like I'm not waisting money but then when I do I have to keep evaluating whether it's worth it. Perpetual licenses I have no trouble popping though. I think my gaming habit is a good example, I probably spend on average $10-20 on games every month from the same service but I wouldn't pay $15/mo for their entire catalog.

nemo1618 9y ago

I would gladly pay $10/month to read Slate Star Codex. Heck, I'd pay $10/month just to have access to its archived posts. I'd pay $5 for ranprieur.com. Not a ton of content, but he keeps me thinking about interesting questions. I don't follow Gwern actively but I'd probably pay to have access to his site too.

digitalni 9y ago

How do you know that "a lot of people" are paying to read stratechery.com? Any sources to back this claim?

JumpCrisscross 9y ago
> How do you know that "a lot of people" are paying to read stratechery.com "Ben Thompson has several thousand readers who are happy to pay him $100 a year for his excellent Stratechery newsletter" [1]. [1] https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/04/why-newspaper-subscriptions-are-on-the-rise/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/04/why-newspaper-subscription...
lawrencewu 9y ago
He makes $200k / year from his newsletter: http://www.niemanlab.org/reading/ben-thompsons-stratechery-is-doing-200000-a-year-in-revenue/ http://www.niemanlab.org/reading/ben-thompsons-stratechery-i...
- vasilipupkin 9y ago
  wow, that seems really not much for a publication focused on business strategy.
  - scarface74 9y ago
    That was a few years ago when he said he had 2000 subscribers. He doesn't say how many he has now.

praptak 9y ago

Seriously don't know. Anything I can think of seems like a stretch. I pay a monthly fee for access to a popular Polish newspaper/news portal though.

johnmax 9y ago

jwilcoxson 9y ago

I was paying $5/mo for Ars Technica, and recently switched to paying $50/year, because they were giving away a Yubikey with it. You don’t get any more content, but no ads and full text RSS.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

alexpetralia 9y ago

Matt Levine's Money Stuff

Spidler 9y ago

LWN.net gets a bit more than $5. You pay to get quality content a few weeks ahead of time. Well worth the money.

danieldk 9y ago
You pay to get quality content a few weeks ahead of time. Just a week ahead of time: https://lwn.net/op/FAQ.lwn#subs https://lwn.net/op/FAQ.lwn#subs But I agree, LWN.net is awesome, I am also subscribed for $7 per month. They have really well-researched articles about Linux and the Linux community.

washadjeffmad 9y ago

I'd pay $5/mo for a digital-only Lapham's Quarterly, and I'd be willing to pay separately for The World in Time.

CM30 9y ago

None of them. Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of blogs and media sources I like, but at the end of the day I can get any information I want somewhere else for free. Heck, in many cases, the information I need is either paid for by taxes (the BBC) or provided by hobbyists for free anyway.

jancsika 9y ago
100% agree. There's also some sleight of hand in that headline... Which git repos would you be willing to pay $5/month to clone?
justaguyhere 9y ago
I'm not sure this is correct always. Sure you can get much of the information for free, but not any, as you mention. And even if you did, you'd be paying for it with your time, spending hours and days poring over data and separating facts from noise. For example: if you are an investor, can you get information on potential opportunities (stocks to buy or whatever) without having to spend money or a lot of time? What about real estate? If you or a loved one has a unusual medical condition and you're interested in knowing every recent development in the diagnosis, treatment etc of the condition, can you get it accurately and quickly for free? Happy to be proven wrong, but I guess we'd be paying for good information/commentary/analysis etc one way or other - with time or money.

Broken_Hippo 9y ago

There aren't many. HN is the closest, but the truth is that I'd not start out paying $5 a month for it: I'd have to have 3 months free to test, then .... maybe. I'd probably pay for Reuters, AP, or BBC. The thing with these is varied content or content I check on my own. The problem with most things bogs is that I don't get that much out of them. They are like newspapers or magazines: Might be OK every now and then, but nothing I'd read daily without getting bored of the content or finding it not nearly as useful as paying attention to them occasionally. I really wish advertisements were responsible and non-intrusive, but unfortunately this is rarely so. It wasn't so with television, newspapers, and magazines pre-internet either. Paid cable was filled with so many ads! Even paid channels advertising their own advertising long after a decent cable guide on demand existed. My other big exception might be a cooking blog if it lacks the horrible ad experience and stops people from forcing their morals on me (I can buy organic flimsy brand butter if I choose, but listing it as an ingredient annoys me to no end). But again, I'd not pay it upfront and a free full-access trial would be necessary.

jnbiche 9y ago
> and stops people from forcing their morals on me Those are almost certainly not their morals that they're including in the recipe, but rather their monetization strategy. Those brand-specific ingredients are likely examples of brand placement.
- Broken_Hippo 9y ago
  The brand specific ones are probably so. Simply listing "organic butter" isn't such a thing, and it happens quite often. I understand enough to just use the butter I have, but some folks truly aren't. (I once had someone tell me ibuprofen didn't work for them: they had to have Advil. Same stuff happens with cooking, even with ingredients mandated to be the same).

vphillips 9y ago

Hi, I was curious to see the responses to this question. I run Opportunity Overload and we have paying subscribers for our pro-tier. We started at $10 per month and now have a $50 per month plan (still working on the details of this). We send out the best weekly entrepreneurial opportunities in the form of sites, side projects, domains, broad opportunities and courses that we write. http://www.opportunityoverload.com http://www.opportunityoverload.com Focus on providing something that you would want to pay for. 'Scratch your own itch' sort of speak. Hope this helps, Vic

nottorp 9y ago

5/month is too much. Consider how many different websites you're reading in one month, then imagine they all cost $5/month. It will start to hurt. On the other hand, sites that charge you directly have to charge a minimum because of banking fees etc. What we need is some middleman that will charge you $15/month then distribute it somehow along all the sites that you wish to support. Criteria to be done, maybe evenly, maybe based on how much you read from each...

rusbus 9y ago
If Brave / BAT actually catch on, this is the exact problem they're solving

Hnrobert42 9y ago

I already do for Ars Technica, Wikipedia, and NPR.

lolikoisuru 9y ago

LWN.net It's not a blog or a newsletter but proper journalism and definitely worth the $5/mo I pay for it. I don't think there is any newsletter that just recycles other people's content would be worth the money.

cirgue 9y ago

I would pay for a professionally edited newswire service that doesn't advertise and doesn't sell content to anyone other than end users.

TheAceOfHearts 9y ago

Currently I don't pay for any blogs or newsletters. I'd be willing to pay for high quality content as long as it were still made freely available, ideally with a permissive license. It is my belief that knowledge should generally be accessible to society. I support content creators that have used similar strategies in other mediums. Some examples: 1. Exploring ES6 [0]. The book is freely available online which means I can access it anywhere and easily share relevant sections if the need arises, such as when having an online discussion or explaining to a beginner how a specific feature works. I happily bought a copy and regularly recommend it to others. 2. Textual [1]. It's an open source IRC client which charges for the precompiled version. I like having the option to dig into the source and compile it myself if the need arose. Paying for it allows the developer to continue working on bug fixes and improving the tool. If I were more involved in the topics they covered, I'd happily start paying for LWN.net [2]. They allow linking to articles without paywalls and seem to produce very high quality content. [0] http://exploringjs.com/es6/ http://exploringjs.com/es6/ [1] https://www.codeux.com/textual/ https://www.codeux.com/textual/ [2] https://lwn.net/ https://lwn.net/

ilovetux 9y ago

I don't think I would pay a monthly membership for a website, but what I would be willing to pay for is Google and Facebook to stop watching me and showing advertisements. If I could pay the online ad companies to pay the content creator like I was a "click" or a "view" I could have an ad-free online experience while the content creator continues to get paid like I had seen the ad. The opportunity for Google is huge I know a lot of people who would cough up $5-10/mo for an ad-free online experience.

thinkdisruptive 9y ago

Almost none, unless it was something I'd read every day + found more than 1/2 articles relevant + useful. Won't even pay for NYT if only 5 or 6 articles/month add significant value. We need a subscription business model that aggregates content like cable/pay tv, so I can pay a fair price once, and continue grazing across most sites without worrying about individual subscriptions or micropayments. WSJ and Economist are only sources I would pay for (at a reasonable price) that aren't providing specific data points I can use. And, most people wouldn't find those as useful as I do, so it's down to personal preferences and how much of any source you'll get value from. It's why individual subscriptions to everything is a dead-in-the-water business model that's going to kill off most journals. Most sites will be abandoned if there is a paywall. Think about it this way -- how many people would pay for The History Channel or HGTV as individual add-on tv channels? Yet a very large number of people will occasionally watch those sources if it's included in general subscription, and they add value to the overall package, even if you rarely watch them. That's the way I view 99% of online content. And, you have to make it dead easy, and not be constantly harrassing me about subscriptions or micropayments, or I'm gone. And, I also expect sites I'm paying for to be ad-free and not slowing down my browser, or I won't pay.

rpdillon 9y ago

I was recently introduced to the 3blue1brown youtube channel. Easily worth $5/mo, IMO. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYO_jab_esuFRV4b17AJtAw https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYO_jab_esuFRV4b17AJtAw

aogl 9y ago
Thanks for introducing this to me!

rutierut 9y ago

I'm subscribed to the correspondent but it's more their mission and work I'm supporting than actually paying to read their articles, though they are very good.

pjc50 9y ago

I tell you what would be amazing: content aggregators (like HN) that charged and distributed money to the content providers. Unfortunately it's really hard to build a community if you charge.

rayalez 9y ago
Are you familiar with steemit? They're trying to do something like that, although the result is not as good as HN or even reddit.

subpixel 9y ago

I would pay $5/mo to use Twitter, but only if every other user paid the same amount and there were no ads.

aldoushuxley001 9y ago
I'm curious, what is it about Twitter that you'd pay for?
- subpixel 9y ago
  If it ceased to be free it would possibly maintain its utility and gain some civility b/c most of the people that constitute the political echo chamber would balk at paying.
justaguyhere 9y ago
I'm curious why Twitter isn't at least experimenting with this (or Facebook and others). Even if just 10M accounts paid $5 per month, it is 600M biz a year.

nunez 9y ago

LWN.net. I don't read their articles often, but seeing what's on the forefront of the Linux project and associated work without combing through tons of commits is useful

gigama 9y ago

I read more blogs (single articles based on headlines of interest) than newsletters (digests that show up in my inbox). While I find many of them interesting and informative (krebs, schneier, ars, hn...) there's so much duplicated info around there isn't much I'd be willing to actually pay $60/year for. Would rather do something like cryptocurrency micro-payments per actual article read to the end (or upvoted, clapped, etc) as opposed to spending a set amount of money per month for potentially unhelpful content or articles I don't get around to reading. That would reward content creators for writing good material that actually gets read and the economy of scale would pay based on that mutual incentive. Such micropayments would also be a better metric than simple impressions and clicks.

rayalez 9y ago

Definitely http://slatestarcodex.com http://slatestarcodex.com Extremely engaging, educational, well-researched articles. More articles from EY at http://lesswrong.com http://lesswrong.com. Hacker News.

baobaba 9y ago

I stumbled upon https://www.dailycodingproblem.com/ https://www.dailycodingproblem.com/ recently and it's the first time I want to pay for a newsletter. I don't need to pass a coding interview, but I used to be a competition programmer in high school and love thinking of tricky coding problems to solve. The newsletter includes a detailed solution to each problem (the next day.) What a great idea. I also used to pay for http://railscasts.com/ http://railscasts.com/ by Ryan Bates - back when it was a paid subscription. I paid for how succinct the information was organized, despite there being a tonne of other Ruby blogs out there.

aivarsk 9y ago

https://blog.acolyer.org/ https://blog.acolyer.org/ - for summary/overview of CS papers.